Every poem made by Martin Espada makes you think about what is going on with all of the discrimination towards Latinos. He uses a mix of irony and special word choices to show that discrimination can be done in different levels, and that it can be a tiny thing, like banning the use of spanish in the bathroom, or a huge thing, like lynching two mexicans in Santa Cruz.
The poem New Bathroom Policy at English High School is about a principal who hears some kids speaking spanish inside of a bathroom, when the principal was listening fro inside of his stall. The only word he recognized was his own name. Then Espada Says “This constipates him, so he decides to ban speaking spanish in his school. Now he can relax.” The way that he says that he calls the high school an “English High school” in particular, helps enunciate that he is distant and vague about the school. He adds irony to the fact that the school is english, when it has people speaking spanish in the bathrooms. The level of discrimination that the principal shows is caused by his ignorance at the fact that his school is not really such an “English High School.”, but at the same time, the principal decides that the school has to be only english, when there are kids who speak spanish in it. He is also extremely self conscious, and thinks that whatever they are saying, needs to be said in English, so that he can understand the kids are saying while he is inside of the bathroom.
In his poem Revolutionary Spanish Lesson whenever somebody mispronounces his name, he wants to dress up like a terrorist, and with a “Toy Pistol”, hijack a busload of republican tourists and make them chant anti-american slogans, and then wait for the bilingual swat team to come, telling him to be reasonable. In this poem, the people are making fun of his name, or not caring about it, and he gets incredibly frustrated with the people, and he only gets respect when he decides to do an act of terrorism, and only then does he get people to talk to him in his native language, and only then is he actually respected by all of the americans. The part where he says “A busload of republican tourists from wisconsin” makes it strike home more, because republicans are generally against illegal immigration, and the fact that they are tourists make them seem more innocent, and less like they deserve to have this happen to them. The fact that they seem more familiar makes it strike home a lot more.
The poem Two Mexicanos lynched in Santa Cruz, May 3rd, 1877, is about a day when two mexicans were lynched in Santa Cruz after the revolutionary war. He calls the white men who did it “Gringos” which is the traditional label for Americans that was given to them by all of the Latinos. Espada seems to be saying this so that he can seem as far detached from the people who did it as possible, and to make them seem less human, and more like cold killers. The word gringo makes it seem like everyone of them is the same, even though they are all different people,they all seem like the same person when they hang the mexicans. In the end he adds that they were “all crowding into the photo”. This means that they were proud of what they had did, and Espada is saying that those people are who gringos are very similar in the ways that they are acting.
Each of Martin Espadas poems have a different level of racism in it. There are so many different levels of racism, and the Two Mexicanos lynched in Santa Cruz, May 3rd, 1877 was the most extreme one of them, while the new bathroom policy was minor but just as scary. Will Rogers said “We will never have true civilization until we have learned to recognize the rights of others.” This means that we will only truly rooted in society when we see all of the other people in the world as equals.
